Have 7 and XP and wife has 8. She can't run half of my business programs on it. Peachtree accounting and a few others (mostly accounting type) will not load on her Windows 8. I also have an Ipad air which I use in the field. An Android tablet with flash drives for manuals as not good cell service in my area. I really liked XP and don't really care for Windows 7.

XP support has been shut off (or so they say) so unless you need a touchscreen styled interface Win7 is the best choice. The three flavors (Home, Pro and Ultimate) really don't matter to a single user or Home Networked user. I use Windows Media Center on 4 TVs and find the Win7 version a bit better. I do have 1 Win8 machine that's a pretty underpowered machine and Win8 definitely runs a bit smoother than 7 on it. But yeah, Win7 is the best current version, IMO.

I have Windows 7 Pro on my home computer. Other than it being 7 years old and needing a fresh install, it works just fine for the four of us. I've never had an Apple product other than the iPhone 5 that $ears gave us for work. After using Android devices for the last 5 years I find it extremely difficult to use the iphone. I don't know why but I just can't stand using it. And it's on sprint so that doesn't help either.

I am using windows 7 pro on my one laptop, the one I use for business. It has 8 gig ram, dual core processor (I think I paid 1200 for it, was best one available at the time about 4 years ago). Had windows 8 on it, took it off and went back to the windows 7. I have 2 other laptops, one has vista on it (sucks) and the other XP. I personally like XP the best of all, but not supported anymore so I just use that one to move files around on my hard drives. I have an cheap android pad I can load up with manuals or other things I need it for, and I have about 15 portable hard drives I archive stuff on. Can't have too many backups. I have 2 desktop PC's , one has win 7 and one has xp. That's my PC collection

I have one older mac I use for my recording studio, but it is specifically for music and do not use it for anything else. Don't have much time to screw around with that lately, but it has no other programs on it except recording software.

I personally don't think I would put the dual boot system on one single piece of hardware, It would be better to keep them seperate. My opinion. I always keep my pc's streamlined, not putting on any unnecessary software on. And a different one for every purpose. I don't play games anymore (they can really slow down a system), and when I did had them on a seperate PC> .

So..................... My opinion, I would probably go with a win 7 pro unit if it were me and needed a windows laptop.

I do have Windows 7 installed on a laptop, but I dual boot to Linux. I have set my default OS to Ubuntu Linux 12.04 LTS (Long Term Support) The Linux desktop environments are far more advanced than anything Windows offers. Linux offers things like "multiple desktops", you have the "always on top" option for any window, and along with maximize and minimize, you can " shade" a window. Those are just a few little advantages I find super handy.

If you want to give it a go, download Linux Mint Cinnamon w/codecs to your hard drive, and then install it to a flash drive. You can then boot from the flash drive, and Linux will run on your system without mounting any of you're hard drives, and run completely in memory. This way you can try out Mint without doing anything to you're current OS/system.

One of the biggest advantages of Linux is the software repositories. One click updates every last piece of software on your system. When I boot to Windows, I want to pull my hair out...... In Windows, every time you install or update your software, you have to reboot, and then if you want to do a quick reboot, you are forced to wait for the system to download and install updates. GRRRRRR

I run Linux on everything, personal and business. Even my Android phone runs Linux, because Android is Linux, but Android is a very restricted linux desktop/windows environment offered by Google, and as such, Google made sure you couldn't use ANY of the usual Linux software, other than the kernel and hardware drivers. I hate it when companies do crap like that.